EL PAÍS offers the América Futura section openly for its daily and global informative contribution on sustainable development. If you want to support our journalism, subscribe here.
Read more Trump drives, despite himself, support for the Catholic Church in the United States
On Palo Seco beach, just at dawn in this area of the Parrita canton, about twenty volunteers from the Captain Paul Watson Foundation (CPWF) move back and forth carrying bags of sand and logs. Like every Saturday for the past two months, they work to build a nursery for Kemp’s ridley turtle eggs (Lepidochelys kempii), an endangered species whose nesting season begins in June.
“We are filling sandbags to make a barrier so the waves don’t destroy the nursery,” explains one of the volunteers. Once the nesting season starts, the plan is to move the eggs to the nursery so they are not stolen by poachers. In Costa Rica, the illegal trade of turtle eggs devastates nests in the Caribbean and the Pacific, and it is one of the reasons why the National System of Conservation Areas (Sinac) estimates that barely 10% of the deposited eggs successfully complete their cycle until the hatchling reaches the ocean.
This project is named after Jairo Mora, an activist dedicated to turtle protection, who was murdered in 2013. In the early hours of May 31 of that year, the police found his gagged body on Moín beach, in the Costa Rican Caribbean. The environmentalist — who was 26 years old and had devoted much of his life to this work — was approached by a group of men while patrolling accompanied by four foreign female volunteers, whom the attackers raped, but who managed to escape and report to the authorities. According to the autopsy, Mora died from asphyxiation after receiving a blow to the head.
Although the men were captured and sentenced to 35 years in prison, this case remains an open wound in Costa Rica. Shortly after the activist’s death, the organization he was part of stopped patrolling. Because of this, with the Jairo Mora Project, the CPWF has been seeking for a year to continue the fight against egg poaching and keep the activist’s legacy alive.
When the nesting season begins, volunteers will start the next phase: night monitoring to find the turtles that are nesting and thus move the eggs and be able to care for them. To prevent poachers — or “egg collectors,” as they are colloquially known — from stealing from the nursery, they will also have to implement day and night surveillance.
The sale of turtle eggs in Costa Rica is illegal, with the only exception being Kemp’s ridley turtle eggs from the arribadas at the Ostional National Wildlife Refuge, on the Nicoya Peninsula (northern Pacific); this is a strictly regulated commercialization. These eggs are considered an exotic delicacy and an aphrodisiac, which gives them value in the illicit market.
Activists acknowledge that these processes affect the natural birth cycle of turtles, but they accept it as a lesser evil due to how widespread egg theft and trafficking are in Costa Rica.
Direct action
The CPWF, an international organization of the controversial environmentalist Paul Watson, was established in Costa Rica in 2024. The coordinator and spokesperson of the local office, Víctor Boza, has been working with Watson for over a decade, first with Sea Shepherd Conservation Society, his previous NGO, and now with this new entity.
In 2014, Boza also took part in a first initiative in honor of Mora. “Foreigners came and patrolled Moín in a violent way in an area where there are egg collectors and poachers linked to organized crime,” he recounts.
The activist believes that was part of a euphoria and greenwashing that occurred after Mora’s death, but it didn’t last long: “Working with the law of the strongest doesn’t work. That’s why, with Watson, we decided to focus on education, direct action, and communities.”
The CPWF officially began its activity in Costa Rica at the beginning of 2025. At first, they coordinated river and beach clean-up days. “There we had to start gathering volunteers completely from scratch,” Boza explains, clarifying that the funds they use come from direct donations to the CPWF and that all work in Costa Rica is voluntary.
Read more A Spanish clothing brand uses the symbols of the Zapatista Army on a soccer jersey
Together with Carolina Torres, his partner and “right hand” at the CPWF, Boza says they tried to seek “a new approach that wasn’t just about picking up trash.” Operation Jairo Mora is part of the direct action facet, as is the work of the Aguas Vivas project, dedicated to collecting plastic fishing nets carried out in collaboration with volunteers trained in diving.
In the educational branch, they developed a project aimed at children that has involved 2,500 minors in six months. “The goal is for them to learn about the sea and understand the oceans from another perspective. With virtual reality systems, the kids learn by playing and seeing the animals, something fundamental given that Costa Rica’s maritime territory is 11 times larger than its land territory,” Boza points out.
Although the CPWF has collaborated with local governments and conducted educational sessions in state museums, Boza considers Costa Rica a contradictory country in environmental matters and questions Sinac’s role. “There are many very good people working at Sinac who have all my respect, but more commitment to turtle protection is needed,” he states.
With the third facet of the program in Costa Rica, the community one, the CPWF wants to make a turn so that “those who are causing the damage start to change the community,” says the coordinator. “Our goal is for Parrita and every community where we work to be sustainable over time. That’s why we don’t want to arrive as outsiders on the coasts and start fighting with locals who sell the eggs. We want to start a learning path and involve people who steal out of necessity, because they could be incredible guides.”
The activist says many egg collectors are locals and that “they have seen turtles since they were six years old,” so they know “what day they come out, where they come out, how they come out, and at what time they come out.” “If we can absorb them, pay them for work as guides, and have them work and stop selling eggs in bars and restaurants, we will be doing a service to the community.”
He also points out that these illegal activities are often associated with the extreme poverty that abounds on the country’s coasts and from which organized crime feeds. “Many people look for eggs because it is an income for their families. Each nest is sold for about 10,000 colones (around 20 dollars) to restaurants,” he explains.
Boza, however, acknowledges that this goal will be more long-term: “We want to empower people in the communities. What do we need? Money to pay them. How are we going to do it? We don’t know yet.”
Margarita, one of the volunteers at the Parrita workday, also says it is important to always see the social side. “It’s not about good and bad people, because many of those who poach eggs are people from a low social stratum in areas with few job opportunities. It might even be the food they bring home.”
The goal of these programs is not “to make money,” says Boza, and the Jairo Mora issue is especially sensitive in that regard, since, he adds, other NGOs have used his name and image for commercial exploitation.
For Margarita, it is fundamental that the initiative carries this name because in Latin America “it is a fact that being an environmentalist is one of the most dangerous things there is and in most cases there is no justice. Jairo himself said he was going to die for the turtles if necessary, and sadly that’s how it ended up happening.”